After a start to the season during which they appeared to do everything write, many have dismissed BYU\’s chances to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament due to the suspension of forward Brandon Davies. Davies was booted from the team for the rest of the year due to an honor code violation, but the Cougars have kept winning. In their opening game of the Mountain West Conference tournament they did experience a tougher than expected challenge from seemingly overmatched TCU, but survived to post a 64-58 victory at the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

TCU did cash tickets for college basketball enthusiasts, easily covering the spread as +17 point underdogs on the impartial court venue on the UNLV campus. TCU wasn\’t an especially strong play as an underdog this period covering only 6 of their previous 18 games when getting points. BYU was around breakeven in most point spread types, but also lost money in tonight\’s relevant situational role-they were 11-14 ATS as a favorite. A bigger concern going forward has to be the Cougars\’ substandard performances in tournament play-at least from a point spread perspective. Ever since 2008, BYU is 3-12 ATS in tournament games and just 5-13 ATS in neutral court settings.

BYU head coach Dave Rose tried to put a positive spin on the ugly win:

\”I was really pleased with how we competed. I thought our team in crucial situations got big rebounds. We made big shots. We made big free throws. We were able to win that first-round game, which is very difficult, to play a team for the third time.\”

His TCU counterpart Jim Christian praised the Cougars as the same time as lamenting his own team\’s lack of depth:

\”We have seven players. We had a lot of guys that played 40 minutes. It fallen down to a couple plays. We left some points out there, a couple 2-on-1 breaks, a couple free throws. You have to make all those little plays to beat them. I think they\’re that good.\”

Cougars\’ scoring machine Jimmer Fredette concluded with 24 points, but was just 7 of 21 from the field:

\”Not a lot of times do we miss wide-open shots like that. But sometimes that happens. We just kept playing, kept battling, still got the victory. So that was good.\”

There\’s some proposition that BYU may not be as intently focused on the Mountain West competition as some of their meeting rivals. With a 29-3 SU record and ranked #8 in the country, BYU is a \’lock\’ for an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament along with fellow MWC entrant San Diego State who are ranked #6. They\’ll face an extremely tough challenge in their next game, taking on a New Mexico Lobos team that accounted for two of the Cougars\’ three losses this period.